A Haunting at Kainan
by Kaiser Washington
Summary: The Ryonan, Shohoku, and Shoyo basketball teams have been invited to Kainan High for several nights of fun and games. Except it turns out that Maki might be hiding something. A rewrite of Nights at Kainan. ON HOLD (See A/N in Ch. 6).
1. Chapter 1

Summary: The Ryonan, Shohoku, and Shoyo basketball teams have been invited to Kainan High for several nights of fun and games. Except it turns out that Maki might be hiding something. A rewrite of _Nights at Kainan_. Ongoing.

A/N: Originally published between May 17, 2008 and August 30, 2008 as _Nights at Kainan_. I was reluctant to publish this under the original name, even though I like it better, just because I've changed so much. To be sure, I'm practically rewriting it from scratch. If you've read _Nights at Kainan_ , let me assure you that this is a whole 'nother fic that bears little resemblance to it.

* * *

 **A Haunting at Kainan**

 **Chapter 1**

"What's this?" Akagi's eyes narrowed as he perused the letter in his hand. "Kainan has invited us over for the week. Looks like some kind of a camp."

"A basketball camp?" Mitsui plucked the letter out of Akagi's hand without asking and passed his eyes over its contents. The pretentious frayed-edged parchment on which the missive was written in an elegant cursive should have raised red flags immediately. "No, it's not a basketball camp. It appears to be a party."

"A party?" Sakuragi laughed loudly. "So that Old Geezer has finally come around to accepting me as a genius, huh?"

"Yeah, right." Rukawa rolled his eyes.

"Well, it would be rude to decline," said Ayako. "And we've got a couple of weeks of summer vacation left anyway."

"Aya-chan!" It was the honeymoon Miyagi had always dreamt of.

"I guess we're all going, then," said Akagi without enthusiasm.

The only reason Rukawa's voice didn't go up in protest—aside from the fact that he didn't do such vulgar things—was that he didn't want to _not_ go and then find out afterwards that it had turned out to be a basketball camp after all.

It was almost midnight when they reached Kainan, as per the invitation. The wrought-iron gates were locked, and the main school building loomed over them in the darkness like a slumbering beast in its enclosure. Not a car passed through the upscale suburban neighborhood at this hour, and the only sound was the breeze that whistled occasionally through the leaves of the surrounding Sakura trees.

"Is this some kind of a joke?" Akagi muttered at length. He hated practical jokes.

Just then a cheerful voice pierced through the night.

"Hey, everyone!"

The Shohoku team turned in the direction of the exuberant greeting.

It was Fujima, followed closely by Hanagata.

"It looks like you guys were invited, too," said Fujima.

"Fujima," Akagi grunted by way of a greeting. "Do you have any idea what this is all about?"

"Fuck if I know," Fujima said cheerfully and with a touch of his old prep-school raffishness, which tended to startle people who didn't expect someone with such angelic looks to be possessed of such a foul mouth. "Maki called, and I came."

"Hey, guys!"

They turned in the opposite direction to behold Sendoh and Uozumi ambling up the sidewalk. Sendoh, as usual, carried himself like someone who was lost, but just didn't care.

"Do you know if this is supposed to be a basketball camp or something?" said Sendoh.

"No clue," Akagi muttered. "Uozumi," he said with a grunt and a nod.

"Akagi."

A few uncomfortable minutes passed in silence. The wrought-iron gates did not so much as sway in the wind.

"Well, this is awkward," said Mitsui, who was carrying an illicit six-pack of beer in his duffel bag. "I genuinely thought there was going to be a party."

A distant clock tower began chiming to indicate that it was now midnight. The group was about to give up hope and head back home, when they heard subdued whispers on the other side of the gates; then a flashlight scattered some of the darkness as its owner shined the light in his own face.

It was Maki.

"Glad you could all make it." He grinned.

"Nyahahahaha! You look so much older with the light in your face!"

The light went out, but not before Maki's scowl was imprinted in everyone's eyes.

"Come on in," said Maki. "Kiyota."

Kiyota emerged from behind Maki, and opened the gates dutifully.

Rukawa smacked him in the face as he passed him, because he thought he'd caught the glimmer of teeth grinning smugly at him in the darkness. He had been right.

"'A week of fun and games'?" Mitsui quoted Maki's letter as they headed down the walkway toward what they assumed was Kainan's gym. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means we figured that we could all use a little more camaraderie around Kanagawa, and Kainan, as usual, decided to take the initiative—"

"Cut the crap, Maki," said Fujima. "We all know this is just another attempt at making all the other schools in town look ungenerous and small-minded, so what's this really about?"

Maki sighed deeply.

"It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you more when we're inside, but you have to promise me that you won't back out. Please, guys." He had never sounded more earnest. "I could really use your help."

"You don't have to degrade yourself in front of these losers, Maki-san," said Kiyota. He let out a bark of a laugh as he prepared to launch into a speech about Kainan's virtues, but Maki silenced him mid-rant with a blow to the head.

Fujima decided that Maki sounded desperate enough to owe him favors later on, and bit back the smartass retort that was on the tip of his tongue.

"All right, Maki," he said. "You can count on us to hide your stash of porn DVDs or whatever."

Maki ignored him and pushed open the gym doors. The only light in the gym was a single floodlight up on the mezzanine, and everything around the perimeter of the basketball court was pitch black. The other Kainan starters stood at the center of the court, looking like film noir characters. Maki locked the gym doors behind them as the group entered. The soft click of the lock rang out eerily in the silence.

No one spoke for a few minutes.

Then Jin, whose gaze had hitherto been directed serenely at his shoes, looked up at Maki. He looked strangely hieratical.

"Is this everyone?"

"This is everyone," said Maki.

"I was hoping more people would show up."

"Me, too. Shall we get on with it?"

Jin nodded.

"Okay." Maki took a deep breath and turned to his guests. "I'm going to go over this as fast as I can, so try to keep up. As the captain of the Kainan basketball team and a high-ranking member of the student council, it has been brought to my attention that the future of Kainan High might be in jeopardy. A former student recently came out and claimed that he had been traumatized during his time here by a series of hauntings, which affected his mental health to such an extent that it ruined his career. Since then several other former students have come out of the woodwork with similar stories. They're threatening to sue us big time. The school doesn't want to conduct an official investigation, because any publicity in this kind of a matter is bad publicity. Also, lawyers are a whole different Pandora's box. But anyway, we decided to invite students from other schools to spend a few nights here, so that we could prove to them and everyone else that Kainan really is a safe place."

Silence.

"It seems to me," said Hanagata at length, adjusting his glasses as he reflected on what Maki had just said, "that, if there is in fact something terrible going on at Kainan, then offering up students from other schools as bait is a pretty douchey thing to do. And if there is indeed nothing to fear, then Kainan could just call out those ex-students for being idiots and opportunists."

"It's not that simple," said Maki. He exchanged a nervous look with Jin. "Because Kainan sort of has a past that not a lot of people know about."

"Go on," said Kogure. He had a feeling he would enjoy what came next.

"There were a few unexplained deaths in the on-campus residence hall many years ago—as you know, Kainan is very generous to kids who have had to come a long way to go here—and they might reopen investigation into them, if they took these students' claims seriously. And that is something that Kainan certainly wouldn't be able to weather."

"Tell me more about these unexplained deaths," said Kogure, who had a morbid fascination for such things.

"The official verdict on those deaths was that they were just a series of simple tragedies, but a lot of the students thought otherwise. A few of the residents died in their sleep for reasons that the medical examiner wasn't able to establish; a few hanged themselves in their rooms from the ceiling, even though they seemed perfectly normal and happy before; one student just straight up disappeared. His body was discovered in the sewers weeks later, decomposed almost beyond recognition."

"Simple tragedies?" said Kogure with a twinkle in his eye. "I think not. This was definitely the work of a disgruntled spirit or spirits."

"There were sightings of a strange woman around campus at night in the days preceding the first of these deaths, but no one other than the residents ever saw her."

"And you think there may have been something paranormal about her?" said Mitsui.

Maki closed his eyes.

"When I was freshman here, my parents were working in Osaka, so I had to live in the residence hall. There was a time when my roommate went home for the weekend, and I was left all by myself. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to someone knocking on the door. When I opened the door I saw that it was a maid. I guess that should have been the first sign that something wasn't right. She asked me if I needed clean towels. I said no, and shut the door. I thought it was weird that a maid should go around asking residents in the middle of the night if they needed towels, but I didn't think too much of it. The next day I told the resident advisor about it, and he said they didn't employ maids at the residence hall. And then he told me the stories. So yeah." He opened his eyes and looked sharply at Mitsui. "I do think there's something weird going on here."

An uncomfortable silence followed.

"I did not sign up for this shit," said Mitsui, beer bottles rattling inside his duffel bag.

"Me neither."

"Me neither."

"Nuh-uh."

"Please, guys," said Maki for the second time in his life, voice choked with emotion. "You have no idea how much this means to me. And we will make it up to you, I promise. I didn't lie when I said this would be a fun week."

"So there _is_ going to be a party?" said Mitsui.

"Without a doubt."

"All right!" Mitsui broke out the beer without further ado.

Maki eyed the bottles suspiciously. He would undoubtedly get into hot water with the student council, if word got out that he had permitted people to get drunk at Kainan, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"So what do we do first?" said Kogure, whose definition of a party was slightly different from Mitsui's. "How about board games? I love board games. You wouldn't happen to have a Ouija board around here, would you?"

Maki wondered whether Kogure was always this borderline deranged at parties.

"I think we should head to bed now," he said. "It's almost one o'clock."

"Good idea," said Akagi with an approbatory nod at Maki. "The last thing we need to do is to disrupt our sleep cycles."

"Where are we sleeping?" said Sendoh.

"At the residence hall, of course," said Maki.

"You mean the one—" Sakuragi stammered.

"Yeah."

"With the ghost nurse—"

"Maid."

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Sakuragi bellowed. "Do you have Alzheimer's or something?"

"Shut your stupid mouth," Kiyota snapped. "Maki-san's only seventeen." Then he broke into a mischievous grin. "I think you're just scared."

"Forget it." Sakuragi crossed his arms defiantly. "We geniuses have a very delicate nervous system, and ghosts tend to interfere with our brainwaves."

"Come to think of it," said Miyagi thoughtfully, "during the Nationals, Hanamichi was too scared to go to the bathroom all by himself at night. He'd always wake me up and make me stand outside the door."

"You promised you wouldn't tell, Ryo-chin!" Sakuragi looked hurt and betrayed.

Miyagi only smirked. In reality he, too, was nervous about sleeping in a building that teemed with ghostly maids who knocked on doors at odd hours, but he had to keep up the appearance of strength and fearlessness in front of Ayako. Girls liked fearless guys.

"Anyway," said Maki, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He reached for his reading glasses, but thought the better of it. "We don't have a whole lot of rooms to spare. A lot of residents go home over the summer, but the rooms are still technically theirs. So we've decided to pair you guys off with roommates. See if this works: Sakuragi—"

"I pick Ryo-chin," Sakuragi declared before Maki could go any further.

"Don't be stupid," said Miyagi. He glanced surreptitiously at Ayako. Could he perhaps…? No, that would be coming off too strong. Failing that, the next best thing was… "I'm going to sleep alone." He was pleased to see that Ayako had taken notice of his courage, and was regarding him with a mixture of surprise and admiration.

"Well, there happens to be one single," said Maki, glancing down at the list, "apart from Ayako's and the Kainan team's, of course, and I was originally going to give that to Akagi. But if Akagi doesn't mind rooming with Uozumi…"

"Forget it," said Uozumi.

Akagi nodded his agreement.

"Sorry, Miyagi." Maki cast him an apologetic look. "Looks like you're stuck with Sakuragi in Room 202. Anyway: Mitsui and Kogure—Room 212; Akagi—202; Uozumi—204… Sendoh and Rukawa—207…"

Everyone was assigned a room and a roommate in this manner.

"Great," said Maki. "Now let's go over to the residence hall."

Maki led them into the main school building, where they passed through a series of narrow dimly lit corridors. The darkened classrooms on either side made the corridors look more claustrophobic than they probably did during the day.

"This looks like the start of a great slasher movie," said Kogure cheerfully, peering into each classroom they passed, as if expecting a seven-foot psychopath who had freshly broken out of prison to be hiding in one of them with an assortment of psychopathic surgical tools.

"There are no great slasher movies," said Mitsui with a hint of sententiousness.

"I'm getting a bad vibe from this place already," Sendoh whispered to Rukawa. "I sure am glad you're going to be there tonight to protect me, in case things go downhill." He was only half joking.

Rukawa said nothing.

Maki pushed open a glass door with a flickering green exit sign over it and led the group out into a courtyard. The residence hall stood on the other side like an old abandoned asylum, with its rows of tiny windows cut like embrasures into an unpainted wall.

The interior of the building was no better. The walls were painted a uniform shade of light gray, and the ceiling was lined with little white lights that gave the building the appearance of being designed by lunatics rather than for them.

"I'm not surprised there are ghost stories associated with this place," said Fujima. "I feel like I'm going crazy already. How can anyone possibly live here?"

"It's not so bad," said Maki encouragingly as he led the group up the stairs to the second floor and started handing out keys. "The bathrooms are at the end of the hall. Good night." He promptly disappeared into his room.

Sendoh and Rukawa entered Room 207. There were two twin-size beds on opposite sides of the narrow rectangular room, with a tiny embrasure between them.

"This isn't so bad," said Sendoh.

He put his duffel bag down next to one of the beds and walked up to the window. His first thought when looked outside was that it was, in fact, pretty bad. The window afforded him a decent view of the classrooms in the main school building, and the light in the one directly across from their room was on. Even worse, there was a woman leaning out of the window. Her elbows rested on the windowsill, and her black hair billowed serenely in the wind.

tbc.

* * *

A/N: Now that I've re-uploaded _When the Clock Strikes One_ , I suppose it was only a matter of time before I uploaded my other Horror/Humor fics. I was reluctant to upload this one for the longest time, because its sheer length made it such a pain to edit into something marginally worth reading. I've finally decided to bite the bullet and upload it.

This fic spanned seventeen chapters originally, but this is subject to change, now that I have undertaken to give it a total makeover and turn it from a stupid fic into a not-so-stupid fic.

The original fic was written during a time in my life when I was deeply addicted to Agatha Christie, so it was originally supposed to be more of a mystery story, but I think it deserves to be supernatural.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"What the fuck?"

"What?"

"What's that woman doing over there at this hour?" Sendoh stepped aside so that Rukawa could get a chance to look out the tiny window, which seemed deliberately designed so that anyone standing in front of it during the day would block all light out of the room.

"I don't see anything."

Sendoh pushed past Rukawa and saw to his immense consternation that the woman was no longer there and the window to the classroom was dark like all the other windows in the main building.

"I don't understand." Sendoh swallowed as he tried making sense of the whole thing. "There was a woman standing at that window, right over there. She stuck her head out and just stood there like some sort of a crazy person. She couldn't possibly have vanished so quickly."

Rukawa shook his head and sighed. Evidently Sendoh was on the verge of losing it, and there was little anyone could do about it. Rukawa often suspected that he had never met a saner person than himself, and it was interactions like this that tended to confirm his suspicions. He admittedly didn't know a whole lot about women, but even he knew that they didn't wander around classrooms in the middle of the night, sticking their heads out of windows for no earthly reason.

"You were dreaming," he said; then a better idea occurred to him. "Or hallucinating."

He drew back the covers of his bed before Sendoh could engage him in further conversation, and was in the process of sinking into the mattress with an air of finality, when Sendoh did something so insane that Rukawa's jaw dropped visibly.

"I'm going outside to look for her," said Sendoh, striding over to the door without even pausing to reflect on the craziness of such a course of action. "She couldn't have gone far."

"Wait," said Rukawa, but Sendoh was already out the door, hydraulic door closer shutting the door behind him with a defiant slam.

Rukawa sighed. They both knew what Sendoh really meant when he said "woman". Maki had made sure that none of them would be able to look at a woman after sundown for a long time to come without at least subconsciously entertaining the notion that she might be a disgruntled spirit in the guise of a living person. And now Sendoh, as if to spite anyone who was inclined to defend his sanity, was out chasing after one, without so much as a blunt instrument for protection. Rukawa was loath to think of himself as Sendoh's babysitter, but there are moments in a man's life when he must take on the most disagreeable responsibilities in the name of doing the right thing.

He got out of bed reluctantly, and decided to go after Sendoh. He paused in the courtyard between the residence hall and the main building and looked around. No sign of Sendoh.

"Sendoh," he called out uncertainly, though he knew full well that the only way Sendoh would have been able to hear him was if he had been hiding somewhere close by—perhaps in one of the tall bushes that marked the boundary of the courtyard. Glancing at the tall bushes made Rukawa realize just how spooky it would be, if it turned out that someone was actually hiding in them. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

"Sendoh," he called out again, with a bit more urgency than before. Still no sign of him.

A gust of wind blew in Rukawa's face, eliciting goose bump-inducing sounds from the surrounding bushes and trees, as if they were collectively warning Rukawa against going further.

Rukawa was beginning to get a little creeped out, but he steeled himself, and decided to keep looking for Sendoh. He began walking toward the back door of the main building, half hoping as he looked at the flickering green exit sign on the other side of the glass door, which was the only visible source of light inside, that the door would be locked, when something broke with a crunch under his foot. Bending down, he saw that it was a wristwatch. He swallowed. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he picked it up and examined it in the dim illumination of the waning crescent, though he didn't need to look at it too long to recognize it. It was the one he had seen on Sendoh's wrist countless times over the months, when they had played basketball or when Rukawa had accosted him at his favorite fishing spot on days when he had failed to show up at the basketball court at the stipulated time. This was Sendoh's wristwatch.

He looked up at the glass door once again, wondering with a mounting sense of dread what Sendoh had got himself into in his foolishness. He was considering going in and looking for him, when the flickering green exit sign suddenly went out; and though it produced no sound when it did so, Rukawa felt as if a dam broke somewhere inside his head as blood rushed into his ears. He suddenly came into the grip of fear such as he had never known before. His heart raced and his vision went black at the periphery as he scrambled back into the residence hall, not daring to look back lest he suddenly see Sendoh's lifeless and bloodstained body pinned up against the glass door, or worse—the thing that did that to him.

He slumped down onto his bed when he reached the room, gripping his knees with shaky hands till his knuckles turned white.

That idiot! He had tried stopping him, but he wouldn't fucking listen.

Rukawa knew that he shouldn't feel responsible for whatever Sendoh had brought on himself. That is, assuming something bad had even happened to him. Rukawa didn't have much to go on besides a broken wristwatch, which, for all he knew, might have ended up on the ground for some ridiculously stupid reason, knowing how flippant Sendoh was about everything. It didn't necessarily mean that some paranormal creature had come along and swept Sendoh up into the demon world.

On the other hand, if something bad _did_ happen to him…

Perhaps Rukawa should have been more forceful…

No way. He snorted contemptuously. Sendoh was grown up enough to make his own decisions, no matter how stupid they were. And ghosts were something that only children were afraid of.

Rukawa managed to convince himself that Sendoh would be all right, and would no doubt sheepishly admit in the morning that Rukawa had been right all along, and there had been no suspicious women hiding out in Kainan's classrooms. He got into bed, and fell asleep within the minute.

When he opened his eyes the next morning, he saw that Sendoh's bed was still perfectly made, and there was no sign of him in the room. His stomach turned.

He stepped out of the room in sort of a dazed stupor, and bumped into Maki.

"Good morning!" said Maki pleasantly. "Hope your room was comfortable. Is Sendoh up yet?"

Rukawa inhaled deeply, and decided that the prudent thing to do would be to tell Maki about Sendoh's disappearance, so that it could be someone else's problem instead of his. As he recounted last night's events, he noted with no little irritation that Maki's eyes had been widening steadily throughout his narrative. A part of him had hoped that Maki would laugh and say that the stories about the ghostly woman who wandered Kainan's corridors at night were exactly that—stories—but _of course_ Maki would go and say something horrific to add to Rukawa's sense of guilt, which had returned with a vengeance.

"Rukawa, Rukawa, Rukawa," said Maki, rubbing his temples, as Rukawa ended his summary account of Sendoh's misfortunes. "If something bad happened to Sendoh… then not only would I be personally responsible for dragging him into all of this, but Kainan would probably be shut down indefinitely." He gritted his teeth, and looked away.

"What's the matter? Someone dead?" Fujima shuffled out of his room in a dressing gown with Hanagata in his wake.

"Sendoh, for all we know," said Maki. Everyone had come out of his room by this point, and Maki proceeded to tell everyone what had happened to Sendoh.

Akagi expressed his deepest sympathies.

"I am so sorry." He nodded solemnly at Uozumi. Then he turned to Maki. "What are we doing for breakfast?"

"I saw a fancy-ass diner on the way here," Sakuragi put in eagerly. His mouth had watered at the sight of the diner, and he couldn't wait to try it out.

"This is not the time to be talking about food," Uozumi said loudly. "We have to find Sendoh."

Rukawa, Maki, Fujima, Hanagata, and Uozumi were all out of the residence hall before the others could decide whether to join in on the search for their favorite spikey-haired ace.

"Where did you find the watch, Rukawa?" said Maki.

Rukawa pointed at a spot by the steps leading down from the school's back door.

"Then I guess he tried going inside," said Maki. "He wouldn't have been able to, because the door can only be opened from the inside when school's out. The only way he could have got in is if he had the key, which—"

Maki trailed off as the glass door opened with a soft click, and swung open slowly. A wave of cool air-conditioned air washed over the group as they perceived Akira Sendoh step out of the building with the insouciance of someone who hadn't been chasing ostensibly undead women into empty buildings late at night.

"Hey guys," Sendoh said brightly.

Maki laughed in relief.

"You fucking idiot!" He clasped Sendoh's shoulder warmly. "Do you have any idea how worried we were? How worried Rukawa was?"

Rukawa winced. He had hoped Maki wouldn't bring up that last bit.

"Sorry guys." Sendoh smiled.

Uozumi struck him on the back of the head.

"Don't you ever do something like that again."

"So what the fuck were you up to anyway?" said Fujima.

"I thought I saw someone in one of the second-floor classrooms, so I went in to investigate."

"Hang on," said Maki. "You're saying you were able to open this door from the outside?"

"Yeah." Sendoh was confused. "What's the matter?"

Maki strode up to the glass door and tugged on the handle. The door didn't budge by a fraction of an inch.

"You can't open it from the outside without the key."

Sendoh blinked.

"I opened it just fine last night."

"So anyway, what happened when you went in?" said Hanagata.

"I couldn't find the light switch in the dark, so I tried feeling my way to the staircase. I think I hit my head on something—maybe a low doorframe or something—and the next thing I remember is waking up on the floor in the morning."

"Well, I'm glad you're all right," said Maki. "Oh, and this is your watch. Rukawa found it lying out here, and he sort of stepped on it."

Sendoh stared down at what remained of his wristwatch in horror.

"Well, shit."

"I'll buy you a new one, if you like," Maki offered generously.

"This was a gift from my grandmother." Sendoh shook his head. "She died last year."

A pause.

"Shit," said Maki.

"I'm hungry," said Fujima opportunely. "And I'm inclined to try out that diner Sakuragi saw on the way here."

Kenny's Diner turned to be a bit more upscale than Sakuragi had figured it would be, but he didn't particularly mind, because he had already inveigled Miyagi into agreeing to pay for him.

"Nyahahahaha! This Tensai got you good, Ryo-chin!"

Miyagi grumbled darkly under his breath.

Rukawa sat next to Sendoh in a large semicircular booth, and decided to clear the air between them a little.

"Sorry about your watch," he said.

Sendoh turned and smiled benevolently at him.

"Don't worry about it," he said, and went back to eating his eggs.

Rukawa frowned. Everything seemed fine—excellent, even—but Rukawa couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about Sendoh this morning. His smile seemed a little colder and more distant than usual, in a way that Rukawa couldn't really define, and there was something different about his eyes. It made the hair on Rukawa's arms stand on end.

What had really happened last night?

tbc.

* * *

A/N: All right, this is officially a total departure from the original _Nights at Kainan_ , so rest assured that what happens next will be as much a surprise to me as it will be to you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"All right," said Maki as they headed back to Kainan. "So the jury's still out on whether there really is a strange woman wandering the corridors of Kainan. What do we know so far?"

"That we're all going to die," said Kogure dreamily. He turned to Mitsui, and said with the air of someone imparting great knowledge, "And that's a fact."

Mitsui turned away in disgust. If he'd known that Kogure would prove such a basket case, he would have had second thoughts about rejoining the basketball team after his sojourn on the outskirts of the law.

"Could it be that that ghost of the woman isn't a malevolent spirit?" asked Jin. "I mean, if the woman really were connected in any way to the deaths of all those students, then shouldn't Maki-san be dead by now? That is, if he did truly see her back then."

Maki shuddered at the suggestion that he had narrowly escaped death two years ago.

"Maybe," he said weakly.

"Actually," Kogure interposed eagerly. "I don't think that follows logically—"

He was interrupted by Maki, who went on as if Kogure had never spoken.

"I just can't bear the thought of Kainan being shut down on account of some stupid haunting." He was deeply distressed.

Uozumi placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

"There's no such thing as ghosts," he said reassuringly. "Mark my words, this woman everyone keeps seeing will turn out to be just some vagabond—much like our friend Mitsui here used to be." Mitsui scowled and began examining his fingernails. "We'll find her and call the police, and then everything will be back to normal. Isn't that right, Mitsui?"

Mitsui wasn't paying attention. He had moved on from his fingernails, and was studying Sendoh keenly. He had never been big on styling his hair, and regarded guys who paid too much attention to their looks with the utmost suspicion. Sendoh had always struck him as someone who would have no qualms about stretching the truth to any length, if it suited his own purposes, and was certainly not above weaving tall tales for attention.

"I think Sendoh's lying about the whole thing," Mitsui pronounced. He tended not to mince words—particularly negative ones. "I think he sneaked out in the middle of the night and stayed out long enough for the rest of us to get worried to death, and then returned when…"

He was unable to finish his sentence. Sendoh had turned and fixed him with a penetrating stare, and Mitsui's next words had been stifled. A feeble croak was all that issued from his throat.

"Senpai, what's wrong?" said Ayako.

Mitsui looked as if he was suffocating. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and a strange pallor came over him as he struggled to breathe.

Then Sendoh tore his eyes away just as abruptly as he had brought them to bear on Mitsui.

Mitsui doubled over and gasped for air, hands on his knees for support, as if he'd just run a marathon or was struggling to go on during a particularly exhausting basketball game.

"Senpai, are you okay?" Ayako placed a solicitous hand on Mitsui's shoulder.

"He's fine, Aya-chan." Miyagi pulled Ayako's arm away possessively. "A fly must have flown into his throat."

Mitsui was too dazed to register anything that was going on around him. He was still panting when he rose to his full height and stared at Sendoh with disbelief.

Sendoh was looking up at the clear blue sky with his usual insouciance, as if nothing had passed between him and Mitsui mere moments earlier.

Then Mitsui caught Rukawa's eye, and realized that he wasn't the only one present who had detected something strange in Sendoh's aspect that morning. He decided to wait until they returned to Kainan before confronting Rukawa with his suspicions.

Maki led the group to a large koi pond in the middle of a luxuriant lawn, as if to mourn the—to his mind—imminent shutting down of his great school. The golden fish swimming around in the clear water brought peace to Maki's mind, and helped him come to terms with the facts in these difficult times.

"Rukawa," said Mitsui in sepulchral tones, pulling Rukawa aside. "Notice anything strange about Sendoh lately? Ever since his 'disappearance', I mean?"

Rukawa nodded at length.

"And what do you make of that woman he keeps talking about?"

"I didn't see any woman."

"Do you think he's lying?"

Rukawa shrugged.

Then an outrageous idea occurred to Mitsui. It was so outrageous that he cringed when he thought about it, but he decided to float it anyway.

"Do you think he's possessed?"

Rukawa opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a sharp interjection from his immediate rear.

"Bingo!"

Mitsui and Rukawa both started and turned to behold Kogure standing at their elbows. Neither of them knew how long he had been there, listening in to their conversation with the wide-eyed mania that he became possessed by whenever any talk of the numinous was in the air.

"You're _this_ close to the right answer," said Kogure, indicating the distance between his thumb and his forefinger. He shook his head and smiled like a patient teacher who was doing his best to bring out the most in his dull students. "There's definitely something wrong with Sendoh. There's a dissonant quality to his entire being, as if he were struggling to act normal but falling miserably short. It falls into what experts like to call the 'uncanny valley'—meaning there's something just sufficiently off about him for the result to be creepy as hell. You may have also noticed something about his eyes."

This struck a chord with Rukawa, who had indeed noticed something strange about Sendoh's eyes.

"They were…" He couldn't get himself to say the next words: They were too embarrassing.

"Demon eyes," Kogure finished for him with a look of triumph. "Typically when your physical body is taken over by a higher entity—usually a demon or an exceptionally powerful spirit—its possession of your body is reflected in your eyes, which are, after all, the window to your soul. Except they're now the window to someone else's soul." He laughed a full-bellied laugh at the irony of the metaphor.

Mitsui was tempted to ask if Kogure had had run-ins with demons in the recent past, and if that explained his own eyes, which had the unmistakable glint of crazy in them.

"What do you propose we do?" he said aloud instead. "Stand around in a circle, holding hands, and chant some spell in Latin?"

His sarcasm was lost on Kogure.

"That comes later." Kogure was growing the more animated by the minute, glasses dangerously askew. "The simple test for possession is one of the classic tests for witchcraft. People in the olden days would lower someone suspected of being a witch into a lake. If they floated, that meant they were a witch. Of course, witches today are far too clever to fall for something that basic, but it's still a pretty effective test in the early stages of demonic possession."

Mitsui and Rukawa exchanged looks of the deepest disbelief. This man before them was Kiminobu Kogure? The vice-captain of the Shohoku basketball team? Someone they turned to in moments of crisis because he could always be relied on to be the single voice of reason in any situation?

"I see you don't believe me." Kogure smiled sadly. "Watch."

He crept up behind Sendoh in two silent strides. Sendoh had bent down to examine a particularly large koi that Maki had pointed out to him. Before anyone realized what was going on, Kogure had planted his palms on Sendoh's back with the adroitness of a martial artist, launching the spiky-haired ace over the edge of the pond in a long arc.

"Aaaah!"

The koi scattered as Sendoh landed headfirst among them. He was gone for a moment. Then he emerged, sputtering and gasping for breath.

"Sendoh!"

Maki and Uozumi wasted no time in grabbing Sendoh by the arms and pulling him out of the water.

"What the fuck?" Sendoh demanded. His hair hung about his face in wet clumps. Water flowed freely out of it and dripped from his clothes.

Kogure smiled like a scientist whose theories had met with experimental vindication.

"Kogure." Akagi gritted his teeth. He had to exercise a prodigious amount of self-control to keep from going ape-shit. ("Gori-shit," Sakuragi would insist.) He was aware of Kogure's tendency to nuttiness when it came to the supernatural, but this was unprecedented. "What the hell was that?"

"What the fuck, Kogure?"

"Kogure-senpai!"

Kogure returned with a look of accomplishment to where Mitsui and Rukawa stood with open mouths.

"Gentlemen," he said, straightening his glasses and grinning widely. "It gives me great pleasure to report that Akira Sendoh is, without a shadow of a doubt, possessed by an evil spirit."

Sendoh was led away to the gym by Jin and Maki, where he was given towels to dry off. Maki thought about pinching some Xanax from the nurse's office, but a consideration of his standing with the Student Council stopped him from going down the path of debauchery.

The others returned to the gym not long after. Rukawa studied Sendoh long and hard, searching in spite of himself for a sign—some mark of possession. He found none. The water had washed away whatever he had seen in Sendoh's aspect earlier, and the not-so-spiky-haired ace shivering pathetically in the purple-and-yellow towel on the bench looked just like the old Sendoh that Rukawa had come to know and be continually annoyed by.

"Did we imagine it?" Mitsui asked, echoing Rukawa's own thoughts.

Rukawa gave the matter serious thought.

"Kogure's obviously not all up there," Mitsui went on, carrying on both sides of the conversation without missing a beat; "but what if he's right?"

Rukawa turned and fixed his senpai with a blank stare. The stare concealed his own misgivings and uncertainties.

"I mean, it sounds looney as fuck, obviously." Mitsui scoffed. "But when you think about it, what do we know, really?"

Not much at all, Rukawa conceded within himself. His report card could attest to that.

Sendoh turned and looked at Rukawa, and for a moment Rukawa thought he had caught a flash of something evil in the other's face. His blood froze. The lively chatter of conversation faded away to be replaced by a faint buzz, punctuated at intervals of growing length by the dull thumps of his own heartbeat.

Sendoh smiled.

Rukawa turned pale.

The face under the towel, partially obscured by the clumps of wet hair, was not Sendoh's. Grinning hideously at Rukawa from Sendoh's body was a pair of black eyes in sunken sockets. Translucent skin stretched tightly over a set of high cheekbones. Black lines ran down the cheeks from the eyes, like mascara smeared with tears.

"This is the woman," said Rukawa. But his voice didn't emerge from his mouth: It echoed around uselessly within the emptiness of his own head.

He gasped as realization him.

No, this was not the woman. The woman was to Rukawa's left. He could see her faintly out of the corner of his eye, like an image refracted through a prism, but she always moved out of sight when he tried getting a better look at her. One thing was for certain: he was not afraid of the woman. There was something warm and comforting about her presence. Something vaguely sad, too.

Which meant that the being that was impersonating Sendoh was not the woman at all, nor had ever been. It was something else entirely. There was a decided aura of evil about this other being.

The woman began sobbing. Overlapping murmuring pervaded the air. Rukawa couldn't make out any words. Was the woman telling him how she died? Did she want him to avenge her death? The death of a loved one? Or was she trying to warn Rukawa about the ghoul in Sendoh's body?

Even as Rukawa watched, Sendoh's— the ghoul's skin began to melt off; yet the being did not diminish in size. Instead it grew steadily the bigger.

Eventually Rukawa's vision went black, and he passed out.

Nothingness.

" _Rukawa!"_

" _Rukawa, are you okay?"_

"Rukawa!"

He stirred and opened his eyes slowly.

"He's awake!"

Rukawa opened his eyes fully. The gym light directly above him was on and glaring down at him. He shut his eyes again. Eventually his pupils adapted to consciousness, and he opened his eyes fully again and sat up.

"Are you okay, Rukawa?" said Ayako, helping Rukawa into a sitting position. "Do you need to see a doctor? Should I call an ambulance?"

"I'm fine." _Shut up!_ "I…"

Rukawa came close to relating what he had seen to the group, but he realized that the only person who was apt to take him seriously was Kogure, which was no consolation at all.

He looked past the group at the bench that Sendoh had been sitting on. Sendoh wasn't there anymore. The towel lay draped across the bench, swinging pendulously, as if it had just been put down.

"Where's Sendoh?" said Rukawa.

"Huh?"

"Wasn't he here just a second ago?"

"Did anyone see him leave?"

"I didn't."

Rukawa rose shakily to his feet.

"Let me take you back to your room," said Ayako, throwing Rukawa's arm around her shoulder.

"I'm fine," said Rukawa, pulling his arm away impatiently. "He's gone again. Sendoh."

Maki sighed deeply.

"What did I ever do to deserve this?" he said. He seemed not very far from a nervous breakdown.

"He'll be back," said Rukawa. It was a statement of fact more than an attempt to comfort Maki.

That night Rukawa lay in bed alone in his dorm room. He was wide awake. The last chatter of conversation died down in the corridors outside. Doors clicked shut in succession as everyone retired to their room for the night. Soon the residence hall was plunged into silence. The only sounds were the faint chirping of crickets and the occasional creak of the building's frame.

A minute passed.

Five minutes passed.

Time began slipping out of Rukawa's grasp like loose sand as his eyelids became heavy with sleep.

Then suddenly he was alert and sitting up.

The doorknob rattled. Then the door swung open softly on its creaky hinges.

tbc.

* * *

A/N: I must admit, I'm not especially pleased with how I ended the chapter, though I'm sure you will find a lot more to object to than just the ending.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The door swung open.

Rukawa trained his eyes on the doorway, and waited with bated breath for ghoul-Sendoh to step into the room and strangle him. Or drink his blood. Or just give him a glimpse of his distorted grinning face, which was enough to drive any well-balanced person to madness.

The corridor was pitch black. The moonlight that entered through the narrow window fell just short of the doorway, so that there was no way to see if anyone was standing in it.

Five minutes passed. No one entered.

Rukawa was beginning to wonder whether the door hadn't just swung open of its own accord on account of a faulty lock, when he heard something that made his heart stop. It was the groan of muscle stretching unnaturally—a hideous rubbery sound like that of styrofoam twisting itself it to its limit. It sent goosebumps down Rukawa's spine.

He sat up in bed. He was absolutely certain now that there was something outside the door. Sendoh?

He heard the groan of muscle again. Then a black silhouette crawled into the room on all fours before Rukawa could mentally prepare himself for a paranormal visitation. The silhouette was partially bathed in moonlight. It was black and devoid of features. At first Rukawa thought it was a large dog, and looked around the room for something with which to scare it off. The only thing within his reach was his duffel bag. A well-aimed throw would have the desired effect.

The dog wasn't growling, which was a good sign. It meant that it wasn't aggressive—wasn't out for the kill. Rukawa stepped out of bed quietly to shepherd the dog back outside. He was a cat person, but there was no reason the same tricks couldn't be used to good effect on a dog to win it over.

He was in the process of crooning softly to the thing on the floor when he noticed something that made his blood freeze. He saw that the thing on the floor before him wasn't a dog at all, but a human torso mounted by a human head, charred beyond recognition. It had no eyes and no nose—just charred skin over a blackened skull. All of its limbs were missing. Where there should have been limbs there were just stumps.

The stumps twitched. The body writhed and inched its way forward on wormlike spasms of its spine, producing in the process the sickening groan of muscle stiff with rigor mortis. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air with every movement of its muscles.

Rukawa's instincts took over. He dashed out of the room, past the writhing thing on the floor, and shot down the corridor like a criminal in the night. He took the steps three at a time, slippers clapping noisily against the floor.

He collided with someone at the bottom of the stairs.

"Hey, Rukawa."

It was Sendoh.

"Get away from me."

He shoved Sendoh against the wall and dashed out of the residence hall. He didn't stop running till he reached the koi pond.

Sendoh had given chase after him. He stood panting on the other side of the pond.

"What do you want from me?" said Rukawa, feeling the bolder with the pond between him and Sendoh.

Sendoh waited to catch his breath before venturing to respond.

"Why were you running from me?" he said.

Rukawa regarded Sendoh keenly for a minute. He decided that Sendoh wasn't possessed at the moment.

"It wasn't you," he said. "There was something in my room. A body…" Rukawa trailed off, feeling rather stupid saying the words when the thing wasn't before his eyes.

It took Sendoh a moment to process the information.

"Was it a burnt and dismembered body?" he said carefully.

Rukawa raised an eyebrow.

"You've seen it, too?"

"No, but I guessed."

Rukawa said nothing in response, notwithstanding his surprise. Sendoh owed him an explanation, and he knew it.

"The woman I told you about the other day," said Sendoh. "She's not a ghost. She's a real flesh-and-blood person." Sendoh gave an embarrassed cough for ever having entertained the thought that she was not of this world. "I wanted answers, so I went into the main building. I used Jin's keys to get in. He'd dropped them earlier in the evening, when Maki was taking us on his tour around the campus. I meant to give them back, but I forgot, what with all the emotionally charged conversation about Kainan going under and all that. At any rate, once inside, I found the woman exactly where I'd seen her."

Sendoh paused to let the first part of his story sink in. He began walking around the pond toward Rukawa, hoping the latter had calmed down. Rukawa took an instinctive step in the opposite direction.

"Her name is Hikari Mizuoka," Sendoh went on. "She's had quite a tragic life. She was a student here at Kainan in the early eighties, and had shown great promise academically. She ended up going to one of the best universities in the country. Everyone thought she'd make it big someday. She got married right after graduating to a rich businessman who traded in exotic seafood. He spent half the year in Europe and America and half the year in Japan. He was a real scumbag. Thought Hikari was his inferior because of her humble origins, and treated her no better than a servant—often worse.

"One evening he had a couple of his business partners over for dinner. They sat around drinking late into the night. One of them made inappropriate advances toward Hikari. She tried pleading with her husband to make him stop, but her husband, far from admonishing his partner, joined in."

Sendoh inhaled sharply and decided that he could not go on except elliptically.

"It was awful. Hikari described the event in more detail than I'm comfortable repeating. Later that night, when the three men had passed out in their drunkenness, Hikari slit their throats with a kitchen knife. She wasn't charged with anything, but her husband's family got possession of the house and everything she had ever owned, leaving her with nothing. She's been out on the streets ever since. She breaks into Kainan and sleeps in the classrooms every now and then. From the looks of it, she's been doing this for a while, which would explain all the ghost stories Maki and his fellow students have come to associate with the school. Rukawa, she's certifiably insane. It's understandable, after all she's been through."

Rukawa said nothing. The only sound was the soft gurgling of the artificial spring on the edge of the pond. He half expected the burnt corpse to float up to the surface at any moment, but the koi were all he could see, floating in suspended animation with their eyes open—asleep.

At length he spoke.

"Where's the woman now?"

" _Hikari_ 's staying at a motel down the street," said Sendoh. "At my expense. Thought it was the least I could do for her after all she'd been through. I'm hoping to prevail on Kainan to make a more permanent arrangement for her. She was, after all, one of their star students."

"And…" Rukawa hesitated. "What about the burnt corpse?"

Sendoh frowned.

"Hikari told me of a student who had been brutally murdered and set on fire when she was at Kainan. She refused tell me more, so I've been trying to find out more about the incident from old newspaper articles. The security guard at the library a couple of blocks from here happens to be a huge fan of Ryonan." Sendoh laughed modestly. "He's been letting me unofficially access their newspaper archives after business hours."

"That's where you've been disappearing to every night?"

"Correct." Sendoh nodded. "That's where I was this evening as well. I finally found the article about the murdered student."

Rukawa swallowed.

"What did it say?"

"There was more than one article about the crime, obviously, given how sensational it was; but only one of them made mention of his name and the fact that he was a student at Kainan at the time."

"Kainan must have paid them off to keep it quiet."

"That's what I think, too. The student's name was Toshiro. The newspaper clipping was so old that it was impossible to make out his last name. He went to Kainan around the same time as Hikari. He fell into bad company—really bad company—selling drugs in the street and all that. I'm not surprised Kainan wanted to distance itself from someone like that. One day Toshiro got into an quarrel with another member of his gang. They had both been vying for the position of leader after the previous leader had been killed in a shootout elsewhere in the city. The gang split into two factions behind Toshiro and the other presumptive leader. Toshiro was the only member of the gang who hadn't dropped out of school, so it was a simple matter for his rival faction to plant an ambuscade for him. In their confession to the police, they said they'd ambushed him while he was returning home from school late one evening, and killed him. Then they dismembered him and dumped his body into a trashcan, which they proceeded to set on fire. Realizing that they had failed to do a clean job of getting rid of the evidence, they dumped his body into the harbor. It was found in the sewers almost two months later. It was a really grisly affair."

Relating the story had a cathartic effect on Sendoh, who was disturbed as anyone would be to discover that people were capable of such evil.

Rukawa thought back to the corpse in his room and shuddered. He didn't know whether the backstory made the ghost less scary or more. The backstory sounded vaguely familiar. Then he remembered something Maki had told them during the tour the previous evening.

"Isn't this the same story Maki told us yesterday? About the student who mysteriously disappeared?"

"I'm almost certain," said Sendoh. "Which means that Kainan did a really good job of covering it up, since everyone seems to think it was the work of a ghost."

"It's a good thing Mitsui-senpai left his gang when he did," said Rukawa by way of taking his mind off the corpse. Toshiro's story did indeed bear striking parallels to Mitsui's, though Mitsui's gang had only ever been involved in petty street fights and acts of intimidation. The difference, no doubt, between an ineffectual Shohoku gang and an elite Kainan gang, Rukawa thought with a morbid mirth.

"How on earth did you learn about the incident?" said Sendoh. "I mean, if you dreamt about a burnt and dismembered corpse, then you must have heard about the story somewhere. It can't just be a coincidence."

"It wasn't a dream," said Rukawa with a hint of irritation. "I actually did see a corpse in the room. And a ghoul. You were the ghoul."

"Come now, Rukawa." Sendoh scoffed. "That's mean, even for you."

"I'm not kidding. I really did see a ghoul."

"I guess I'm going to have to ask Hikari about it later," said Sendoh, looking into the distance in the direction of what Rukawa assumed was the motel. "I'm still not prepared to buy your story. There are a lot of things we don't know about the world, but I'm pretty sure dead people can't walk. You've probably been getting less sleep than you're used to over here. Let's head back now, shall we? Try to get some sleep. Maybe some basketball tomorrow morning will help clear your head. I know I need it."

Rukawa followed Sendoh back to the residence hall. He was mired in self-doubt. Was everything he had seen these past couple of days—from the flashes of evil in Sendoh's face to the corpse in his room—just a hallucination brought on by sleep-deprivation?

No, Rukawa had been sleep-deprived before. It usually made him slow and irritable throughout the day, but he had never had hallucinations before. Moreover, he hadn't felt slow and irritable at Kainan. Bored, yes, but not unusually irritable. Which meant that whatever he was laboring under now was not sleep-deprivation.

And hadn't Mitsui sensed something strange about Sendoh, too? Or was that just cigarette withdrawal?

Was Sendoh really possessed or not? And if he was, was the ghoul just doing a really good impression of Sendoh right now? Trying to throw Rukawa off guard by pretending to be skeptical about its own existence while it waited patiently to make him its dinner?

Was the story about the woman—Hikari—true?

These were the questions that tormented Rukawa as he curled up in bed for the second time that night. The smell of burnt meat seemed to hang in the air, but Rukawa was able to convince himself that that, if nothing else he had seen and heard in these past couple of days, was in his head.

There was only one person who could help him. He couldn't believe that he had allowed the thought to enter his mind. But he knew that only Kogure knew enough about the supernatural to help him understand what was really going on. Only he would listen to Rukawa's concerns without laughing at him or sprinting to the telephone to report him to the nearest psych ward. Rukawa just had to catch him in one of his less manic moods.

His second-last thought before he drifted off to sleep was that he would tell Kogure everything in the morning.

His last thought was that it was he who was possessed—not Sendoh.

tbc.

* * *

A/N: I'm not wont to write so many cheap horror tropes one after another. I thought the last chapter had sort of a Stephen King feel to it. This chapter has transcended that and become something altogether uncharacterizable. But I suppose I might as well go the whole distance now. The reader would be well advised to brace himself for more cheap scares.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Hopefully the spate of rubbish updates ends with this chapter.

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

It was a bright and sunny morning. The miasma of doom that had impended over Kainan the previous day was gone. The koi pond shimmered in the sunlight, and the trees swayed gracefully in the warm late-summer breeze. Maki had arranged for mats to be laid out around the pond. He expected that recent events—from all the macabre talk of Kainan's past to Sendoh's dramatic disappearance and reappearance—had put his guests ill at ease—perhaps enough to make them change their minds about staying at Kainan. A refreshing sojourn in nature's lap would restore equanimity among them and ensure that such a thing never happened.

Rukawa contrived to pull Kogure aside while everyone else was busy taking the air or becoming one with nature in some other way, and told him everything.

Kogure listened with rapt attention. Once Rukawa had finished telling him about the burnt corpse and the information Sendoh had stumbled upon, he spoke.

"You're afraid that Sendoh might not be possessed at all, and it may in fact be you who are possessed."

Rukawa nodded. He was past the stage where he felt any embarrassment about entertaining straight-faced talk about the paranormal, and had given himself entirely up to Kogure's authority in these matters. Dr. Kogure, psychoanalyst and noted nutjob, was now presiding.

"There are only two possible explanations I can think of to why the burnt body of Toshiro chose to appear to you," said Kogure. "The first is that Toshiro had some connection, in life, to the dorm room you're staying in. Something is tying him down to this world and preventing his natural passage into the afterlife, and he has made your room his home for the time being. In this case, the best way to proceed would be to find out why Toshiro is unable to move on. What unfinished business could he have in the world of the living? What's holding him back? Once we've helped the spirit of Toshiro find peace, the hauntings should cease."

Kogure said all this with a straight face. If it all turned out to be an elaborate joke, Rukawa would be deeply impressed by his deadpan delivery.

"What's the other possibility?" said Rukawa.

Kogure sighed; then accepting that there was no way around it, he smiled.

"Rukawa," he said gravely. "The second possibility is far and away the more serious one. It may be the case that you're a spiritual magnet. Something about your being draws the souls of the dead to you. You're like a lighthouse, shining brightly through the fog of death, promising the dead safe passage. Picture yourself as a sort of latter-day Charon, ferrying the souls of the deceased across the Styx into Hades."

Rukawa tried, but couldn't. His imagination was not sufficiently well adapted to the looney to afford him such imaginings.

"Or you can think of yourself as the kid from _The Sixth Sense_."

"Okay," said Rukawa at length. "What's the cure?"

"There is none. This is a responsibility that you must carry to your grave."

Dr. Kogure's session had come to an end. Kogure had decided to take his ravings to other ears. Miyagi's, it transpired.

"Miyagi, have you ever heard of the Love Genie?" Rukawa heard Kogure say. "No, it's not a metaphor. I'm talking about an actual genie. You haven't heard of him? Well, your life's about to get a whole lot better…"

Rukawa had ceased paying attention. He was absorbed in his own thoughts. So he was a ferryman for the dead? Did that mean he was out of harm's way? He decided that it was a comforting thought, in spite of its far-fetchedness, and he forbore to pick at it with the pickax of reason.

There was activity by the pond. Coach Takato had deigned to appear before his guests for the first time since their arrival.

"Hello, boys," he said brightly in the sickly-sweet tone of one who was not accustomed to being pleasant. "I hope you're having a great time here at Kainan. We've got lots of things for you to do. There's a mini-golf course, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, catered farm-fresh food in the cafeteria for when you're hungry…"

"Thank you, Sensei." Akagi bowed low before Coach Takato. "But we won't be a burden on your school. Basketball is all we need. Thank you for letting us use your basketball court."

Coach Takato's smile became strained. He had always had reservations about letting lesser teams set foot on Kainan's hallowed basketball court, which in his mind levitated six inches off the ground purely from superiority. It was for that reason that Kainan never hosted practice games.

"Of course," he said with a wide toothy grin.

"Tch," said Rukawa under his breath. He had always found Coach Takato's air of superiority most insufferable.

"Nice of Takato-sensei to let us use his basketball court."

He whirled around to see Sendoh standing next to him, smiling insouciantly.

"Yes, of course," said Rukawa, recomposing himself. He could never tell when Sendoh was being sincere and when he was being sarcastic.

"I seem to recall Taoka-sensei telling us that Takato-sensei was a year younger than him," Sendoh mused aloud. "Which would mean that he's forty years old."

Rukawa couldn't see where Sendoh was going with this line of thinking, and decided that he didn't care.

"When are you going to tell the others what _really_ happened when you 'disappeared'?"

"Don't worry about it," said Sendoh, back to his old smiley self in a flash. "Let's enjoy the weather. Hey, how about a round of one-on-one on Kainan's outdoor court?"

Rukawa agreed. He never noticed that Sendoh had masterfully steered him away from dissecting his account of the pursuit of Hikari Mizuoka the previous day, and forgot all about it in the course of the basketball game.

The other guys, seeing that basketball was afoot, decided to join in.

"Quit hogging the court, you guys," said Fujima. "We want to play, too."

"How about we have a face-off between schools?" said Jin.

"Ryonan and Shoyo have only got two players each," said Mitsui.

"Nyahahahahaha!" Sakuragi laughed. "The benchwarmer's too scared to face the Tensai."

Hanagata flashed his glasses upon Sakuragi.

"The two of us are more than a match for Shohoku," he said. "Especially since you'll be doing half our work for us."

"Say that again!"

"Guys, quit fighting," said Maki. "How about we form our own teams? I pick Sendoh, Mitsui, Hanagata, and Rukawa. We're Team A."

"Maki-san!" Kiyota whined. "What about me?"

"You can sit on the bench," said Maki.

"What! I'm way better than Rukawa. He should be the one on the bench. Tch."

"For once I agree with Wild Monkey," said Sakuragi. "Rukawa being a starting player is an insult to the Tensai."

A vein throbbed in Maki's temple. He exchanged a meaningful look with Akagi. Maybe the two of them could start a support group for people who had spent too much time in the company of monkeys.

"All right," said Akagi. "I pick Fujima, Jin, Sakuragi, and that other Kainan forward for Team B."

"Muto," said Maki. "His name's Muto."

Muto was not a little peeved. It had taken Coach Takato a whole year to stop calling him "Mito", and his name was not something that he took lightly anymore.

"I'll be the referee," Uozumi said hastily so that it didn't appear as if he'd been flat-out ignored by both teams.

"Hey, what about me?" Miyagi's eyes burned with the fire of determination—the determination to prove once and for all that he was the best point guard in Kanagawa.

"You can sit out on the bench."

"What the fuck do you mean…?" Then realization dawned on him. Ayako would be on the bench. "Yeah, fine, whatever."

Both teams organized themselves on the court betimes.

"All right," said Uozumi. "Let's go."

He threw the ball into the air with a flourish.

Akagi and Hanagata jumped simultaneously. The ball soared above their fingers. Hanagata hit it on its downward arc.

"That's a jump ball violation," said Uozumi.

"You threw it too damn high," Akagi growled.

"You're too tall for this job," said Hanagata.

Uozumi bridled, but checked his enthusiasm the next time around.

The game was underway.

Akagi got the jump ball and hit the ball over to Sakuragi, who was full of energy after convalescing from his back injury. Unfortunately, being away from the basketball court for so long had made him a little rusty on the rules.

"Traveling," said Uozumi with glee.

Ayako slapped her forehead.

"Do we need to go through basic training again, Sakuragi?"

"Of course not, Ayako-san."

Kiyota burst into loud guffaws.

Maki punched him.

Sakuragi doubled over in laughter.

Akagi clenched his teeth and began berating Sakuragi at ear-splitting length. What he had failed to realize was that the game had already resumed around him, and the ball was alive. Sendoh and Rukawa got past Fujima and Hanagata in an unexpectedly perfect stroke of teamwork, and scored the first basket of the game.

"Idiot!" Akagi bellowed, landing a large fist on Sakuragi's head.

Sakuragi feared all his progress at rehab had been undone as he fell face-first to the ground.

More laughter from Kiyota.

"Guys, guys, guys," said Maki, interceding from Olympus. "Let's act like grownups for once, all right?"

"Easy for you to say," said Sakuragi, rousing from his coma. "You've been a grownup all your life."

A vein throbbed in Maki's temple.

"What did you say to me?"

He came close to committing hospiticide.

Ultimately it was decided that there was no way a basketball game so charged with passion could continue. Everyone returned to the pond and passed the time making small talk.

Mitsui lay on his back, chewing on the end of a long stem of grass while trying to discern shapes in the clouds overhead. He was bored out of his wits.

"Tell us a ghost story, Kogure," he said in a moment of inspiration.

Kogure smiled broadly.

"I think I know just the story for this occasion," he said after a minute of thought. "It's about a boy named Hiroshi who lived several years ago. He wasn't much older than you or me, and was an average teenager in all respects but one: He loved fireworks—with a passion. More than that, he loved making fireworks. It was a lot easier to make your own fireworks at home back then than it is now. The ingredients were easy to acquire, and setting up a workshop in your bedroom didn't draw the attention of the authorities.

"Hiroshi made fireworks during the day and sold them to kids in the neighborhood. At night, he would go out into an empty field and set some off himself. Now, Hiroshi loved a good explosion—the bigger the better. As a result, his fireworks packed a significantly bigger punch than the standard mass-produced variety. His parents and neighbors were afraid his hobby could end badly for him, but Hiroshi loved fireworks too much to give up making them.

"Then it happened. One evening, when Hiroshi was gathering up a bunch of his most explosive fireworks to set off in the field as he did every night, his cigarette fell out from between his lips and landed among the fireworks. Boom. That was the end of Hiroshi and his family."

"How fucking stupid do you have to be to smoke a cigarette while handling fireworks?" Mitsui laughed contemptuously.

Kogure eyed him curiously.

"There's more to the story," he went on. "Hiroshi's house, while severely charred, was more or less unharmed structurally. The house was rebuilt and the explosion forgotten. Eventually the town was swallowed up by urban sprawl, and a contractor from the city moved into Hiroshi's old house.

"It was pretty unremarkable at first. Then one night the contractor was awoken by a loud thud near the foot of his bed. He sat bolt upright. His eyes darted from one side of the room to another, but there was no one there. Just as he was about to go back asleep, he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He sat up again. There, under the window, illuminated by moonlight, was a burnt corpse lying on the floor. The contractor jumped out of bed and ran out of the house. He never even returned for his stuff."

A minute of silence followed this story.

"Jesus," said Mitsui. He closed his eyes and shuddered. He had sat up when Kogure had got to the part where the corpse fell on the floor with a thud. "I must admit, I didn't expect your story to be quite that scary."

Kogure grinned.

"It does paint quite a picture in your head, doesn't it?" he said. "I can guarantee you won't be able to shut your eyes tonight without feeling a pair of burnt eyes on you."

Kogure was complimented by all and sundry on his storytelling abilities. He acknowledged the praise modestly. Then his eyes caught Rukawa's, and he smiled.

Rukawa was shocked that Kogure should recycle Rukawa's own experiences in such an obvious fashion purely for entertainment. He turned instinctively to Sendoh, and saw that Sendoh was white. With fear? Or with fury?

That evening, when the two of them lay in their beds in their room, Sendoh broke the silence and answered all the questions that had been burning in Rukawa's mind.

"The reason I made up the story about hitting my head and passing out was that I didn't want Maki to know of all this just yet," he said in the dark.

"You were trying to spare him the bad news?"

"Yes," said Sendoh. "But I'm not talking about the fact that Kainan could be shut down. Maki knows that already."

 _Then what the fuck are you talking about?_

"I haven't been entirely honest with you," Sendoh confessed. "I didn't tell you everything Hikari told me that night. I apologize for that."

 _You can make up for it by telling me now, idiot._

"Like I said, Hikari's not all up there, and it's hard to get a straight answer out of her. She also has a tendency to talk in riddles. She told me that Toshiro had a 'young friend' who was deeply affected by his death. She said that that 'young friend'—and she wouldn't name names—was now a member of the Kainan faculty."

Rukawa took a stab in the dark.

"Takato-sensei?"

He was the only member of the Kainan faculty Rukawa knew of.

"I'm positive. He's just the right age to have been a student at Kainan back when Hikari and Toshiro went here. I think he's in much deeper in all this than any of us realized."

This seemed to Rukawa to be straight out of crazytown. He was skeptical.

"Why would he try to cover up his friend's murder?" he said. "Wouldn't he want to bring the killers to justice instead?"

"That's what I thought at first, too," said Sendoh. "But I just had an idea about what Toshiro's last name could have been. It was stupid of me not to have not to have seen the connection before."

"What was it?"

"Takato."

Rukawa's head reeled, even though he was lying in bed. That could only mean…

"I think Toshiro might have been Takato-sensei's brother."

tbc.

* * *

A/N: The plot thickens.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Rukawa awoke at 5:30 in the morning. He lay in bed without opening his eyes for a few minutes, listening to the birds chirping outside. For the first time since he had arrived at Kainan, he had got a good night's sleep, undisturbed by paranormal visitations. Now all that was left for him to achieve the perfect start to his day was to go on a short jog around Kainan's grounds and practice basketball for an hour. Everything was back to normal again.

He got out of bed and gazed at the rising sun behind Kainan's main school building. There was nothing threatening about the building whatever in the golden light of the morning sun. In fact, Rukawa thought it looked awfully peaceful. As far as the campus went, Kainan's sprawling lawns were several cuts above Shohoku's cramped urban campus, which could hardly fit a patch of grass between the school building and all the sporting facilities. At Kainan, on the other hand, you could wander around till you got lost and still not have left campus.

Rukawa was in the process of changing into his jogging clothes when he heard an ear-splitting scream from outside. It was a girl.

"Ayako-senpai."

Rukawa dashed out into the corridor. Which one was Ayako's room?

Several heads poked out of their rooms, Miyagi's being the first among them. The Shohoku point guard leapt to the opposite side of the corridor and began pounding his fists on the door.

"Aya-chan! Are you okay?"

No response.

Maki and the rest had come out of their rooms by this point. He tried the door handle.

"It's no good," he said. "It's locked."

"We'll have to force it," said Uozumi. "Step out of the way, Miyagi."

Uozumi rushed the door like an army tank. The whole floor shook under the force of the impact, but the door continued to hold. Uozumi rushed the door a second time, and it snapped clean off its hinges.

Miyagi leapt into the room over the felled door.

"Aya-chan!"

The room looked as if a typhoon had swept through it. Ayako's duffel bag had been disemboweled, and its contents lay scattered across the floor. Books lay open on their spines. Lampshades were askew. The bed had been divested of linens. There was no sign of Ayako amid the flotsam and jetsam.

"Aya-chan!" Miyagi looked under the bed and under the desk. "Where are you?"

Akagi stepped blushingly over the more private of Ayako's garments that lay on the floor, and tried sticking his hand out of the embrasure. His arm got caught just below the elbow.

"There's no way she could have got out through the window," he grunted.

"There's no other way in or out of the room," said Maki. "She would've had to have gone out the door."

"But the door was locked," said Sendoh.

"She could have locked it behind her."

"Not possible," said Uozumi, indicating the door he had knocked down. The chain had been fastened, and half of it was still attached to the doorframe.

"I'd say she was abducted," said Kogure.

"Oh, really now?" Mitsui snapped. "You're telling me ghosts have now taken to bodily abducting people straight out of their beds?"

"No." Kogure looked affronted at the suggestion that he should entertain such a ludicrous idea. "It was aliens, obviously."

Miyagi bent down and picked Ayako's red baseball cap off the floor. Tears welled up in his eyes as he held it in his hands, wondering what terrible fate could have befallen Ayako.

"Aya-chan," he wept. "Please come back, Aya-chan."

Sakuragi patted his shoulder.

"Don't worry, Ryo-chin," he said. "The Tensai will put his genius detective skills to the task. We'll find her in no time."

"Idiot," Rukawa scoffed.

"Damn you, Rukawa!"

"In that case, we'll _definitely_ never find her." Mitsui smirked.

"Mitchy!"

"Hey, guys," said Sendoh, gazing up at the air conditioning vent above the dresser. "Could she have gone in there somehow? It certainly looks large enough to admit a person."

Maki inspected the grille over the air vent. It had been unscrewed.

"Certainly looks like it," he said.

"Where do the air ducts lead?" asked Uozumi.

"No idea," said Maki.

"Aya-chan!" Miyagi scrambled up the dresser and climbed into the vent.

"Miyagi, wait!" said Maki, but it was too late. "That idiot! It could be dangerous in there. What if he gets lost?"

"He won't rest till he finds Ayako," said Akagi.

"Jin," said Maki. "Turn off the air conditioning."

Jin nodded and took off, with Kiyota close behind.

Nobody wanted to consider the possibility that Ayako had met with a grisly demise between the blades of a fan.

Suddenly there was a loud thud out in the corridor.

Maki and the others rushed out to see Miyagi crouched on the floor, massaging his bottom.

"Damn it," said Miyagi. "One of the grilles in the ceiling was missing. I didn't see it until it was too late."

"Ayako couldn't have got across," said Sendoh, looking up at the ceiling. The vent was much too wide to cross from within the narrow air duct. "If she was indeed in there, then she had to have come out through here."

"She could be anywhere by now." Maki kicked the wall in his frustration.

"How the hell did she manage to climb in through the vent, come out over here, and leave the building—all without any of us seeing her?" said Mitsui. "It couldn't have taken more than a couple of minutes for all of us to come out of our rooms."

"I got out the moment I heard the scream," said Rukawa.

"Exactly," said Mitsui. "So why didn't anyone so much as catch a glimpse of Ayako out of the corner of their eye?"

"We must have been too focused on the door," said Akagi, who knew a thing or two about inattentional blindness.

"No one's addressing the biggest question here," said Kogure. His mania from earlier seemed to have passed for now, and he appeared to be back to his cool, collected, bespectacled old self. "What made Ayako scream in the first place?"

"I wish people'd just stop fucking disappearing." Maki punched the wall. He regretted it instantly, because he had punched straight through the drywall and pulled out a fistful of insulation.

"Aya-chan," Miyagi began wailing afresh. "Where are you?"

A flashlight intruded on their collective despair. It was Coach Takato. He had on a muddy trench coat and an old hat, and had evidently been engaged in something surreptitious.

"What are you boys doing up this early?" he said. "I thought I heard a commotion."

"Ayako's gone," Miyagi sobbed.

"What do you mean 'gone'?"

"She straight up disappeared from her room," said Mitsui. "We heard a scream, and when we went to see what happened, she was gone."

Coach Takato's eye fell on the door that Uozumi had knocked down. He began sputtering like an old motorboat.

"What… I don't… the door… you…" he stammered. "What the hell happened to that door?"

"I knocked it down," said Uozumi matter-of-factly.

Coach Takato took a moment to recover from the initial shock. He was wroth.

"Well, are you going to pay for it?"

Uozumi shrugged.

"It was an emergency," he said, not backing down. "You should be giving me credit for my quick thinking."

"Why, you—" Coach Takato checked himself before he said something unseemly. If Uozumi went back and reported his conduct to Coach Taoka, he would lose all the face he had painstakingly accrued since his high school days. "Never mind the door. Now, how could Ayako just disappear like that?"

"That's what we've been trying to figure out," said Maki, positioning himself strategically in front of the hole he had made in the wall.

"Say, Coach," said Kiyota. "What are _you_ doing out here?"

The question caught Coach Takato off guard.

"I was… I decided to come in early and make sure everything was all right," he snapped.

Rukawa turned to Sendoh. Sendoh was smiling. He didn't buy it either.

"Let's split up and search the campus," said Coach Takato. "I'm sure we'll find her somewhere."

Miyagi was off on his own before Coach Takato had finished his sentence. The rest of the group split up, but without any real hope of finding Ayako in the vast Kainan campus, if something untoward really had befallen her.

"I doubt she's in there," said Rukawa drily as Sendoh rummaged through a bush out in the courtyard.

"Doesn't hurt to check."

Rukawa aimed a kick at Sendoh's shin and missed, and ended up sticking his foot inside the bush. His eyes widened.

"What's the matter?"

"There's something in here," said Rukawa. "Like… like…"

"Mud?"

Rukawa scowled.

"A plastic bag, I think."

Sendoh reached in and pulled out the object that Rukawa's foot had made contact with. It was a black trash bag.

Rukawa swallowed. Black trash bags seldom contained anything besides body parts.

Sendoh turned the bag upside down, and sure enough, a mummified arm fell out—so thin and shriveled that it could have been a tree branch. It had been separated from its owner just above the elbow in what appeared to be violent fashion.

Rukawa started and stepped back.

"What is that?"

"It appears to be a human arm," said Sendoh. "I'd say it's been lying here for a while."

"I can see that," said Rukawa in exasperation. "But _whose_ is it, and how did it get here?"

"I don't know." There was a ring on the one of the fingers, badly charred and covered in embalming fluid. "That ring should be able to tell us more."

Sendoh looked around for something with which to pry the ring off the finger.

"Don't touch it," said Rukawa. "It's evidence."

"You're right," said Sendoh. "We might have to call the police."

He wasted no time in calling the police. Two uniformed policemen arrived shortly, and Sendoh and Rukawa led them to the spot where they had discovered the arm.

It was gone. There was no trace of the trash bag, either.

"What?" said Sendoh. "Where did it go?"

"Wasting our time with prank calls," one of the policemen grumbled.

"Stupid high school kids," said the other.

"No, I swear. It was right here."

"Yeah, yeah," the policemen waved as they departed. "We get a dozen calls a week reporting dead bodies that mysteriously disappear when we get to the scene."

"Damn it." Sendoh stomped his foot on the ground. "Who could have taken it, Rukawa?"

"I don't know."

Just then they heard the rustle of leaves behind them. They whirled around to behold Ayako standing among the bushes.

"Ayako! Where the hell have you been?"

Ayako didn't seem inclined to respond. She jumped out of the bush and landed in front of Rukawa. Before the Shohoku ace could process what was happening, Ayako had taken his face into both her hands and planted a big slobbery kiss on his mouth.

Rukawa's eyes widened. He had never kissed anyone before, and was blushing in spite of himself.

"Ayako-san, cut it out!" Sendoh tried tearing Ayako off Rukawa, but Ayako wouldn't let go.

Rukawa was turning purple from lack of air.

The commotion drew the attention of the rest of the group, who returned to the courtyard to see what the matter was.

Miyagi's eyes narrowed.

"Rukawa, you bastard."

He dashed up to Rukawa and roundhouse kicked him in the side. The force of the impact caused Ayako to break the kiss, and both she and Rukawa went crashing to the ground.

Mitsui and Sendoh managed to restrain Miyagi before he fell upon Rukawa with a renewed ferocity.

Rukawa rose shakily to his feet, massaging his side.

Ayako, still on the ground, moaned and clutched her head, as if she were waking up from a trance.

"Aya-chan!" Miyagi tore free of the hands restraining him and knelt before Ayako. "What happened?"

"Where am I?" Then it all came back to her. Her eyes widened. "There was a man and a woman! They were standing over my bed with a knife! They were going to kill me."

She burst into sobs.

"It's all right, Aya-chan," Miyagi embraced her tightly. "You're safe now. I won't let anything happen to you."

Maki lifted Rukawa's shirt to reveal that Miyagi's kick had left a large bruise on his torso.

"We should get that taken care of," said Maki.

"No need," said Rukawa.

"That man, Ayako-san," said Sendoh. "Was he by any chance missing an arm?"

"Not now, Sendoh." Miyagi pushed Sendoh aside. "Can't you see she's distressed?"

Sendoh stepped back obediently. He had received an answer to his question in the look of terror that had appeared on Ayako's face at the mention of the missing arm. He turned to Rukawa.

Rukawa had been tracing his lips with his fingers, wondering whether he had enjoyed the kiss. He stopped hastily when Sendoh looked his way.

"I think it's time we confronted Coach Takato," said Sendoh.

"Yes," said Rukawa with a cough.

They proceeded down to the gym, where they found Coach Takato stacking a set of foldable chairs against the wall. He had changed out of his hat and trench coat into more respectable attire.

"Sendoh-kun," he said. "And Rukawa-kun. What can I do for you? I heard you managed to find Ayako-kun. That's wonderful news. I always knew she'd turn up just fine."

Sendoh wasn't in the mood for persiflage.

"We know about your brother Toshiro."

Coach Takato froze.

"That arm we discovered in the courtyard," Sendoh went on. "It was you who took it, wasn't it?"

A tense minute passed between them; then Coach Takato sighed, knowing that it was futile to attempt to talk his way out of the situation when he had been so utterly discovered.

"It's true," he admitted.

"Well?" said Sendoh. "I think you owe us an explanation."

"You're right, Sendoh-kun," said Coach Takato. "In fact, I owe you all an explanation. Why don't we talk over tea?"

They headed down to the cafeteria, where Coach Takato had arranged a morning tea. The whole affair was decidedly more English than Japanese, adding to Kainan's image as an elite (and _elitist_ ) prep school. Only Fujima seemed at home with this arrangement.

"You were about to tell us something important, Takato-sensei," said the Shoyo ace as he sipped his tea daintily, sticking his pinky out and everything.

Coach Takato told them about his brother Toshiro Takato: how he had got tangled up with a gang, how he had been killed, and how they had found his body in the sewers.

"When they found him, there wasn't enough of him left to hold a proper funeral." Coach Takato sighed. "I almost gave up hope of ever finding him, but when I started hearing of new reports of hauntings in and around Kainan, I knew I had to find him. You see, he was killed right here on campus, and it is here that I will doubtless find the rest of him as well."

"So you believe your brother's actually come back from the dead?" said Kogure.

"I think it's a sign," said Coach Takato. "Toshiro's restless. He's impatient. He wants to move on, but he can't. Not until we lay him to rest for good."

"And what about the woman?" said Sendoh.

"What woman?"

"Hikari Mizuoka. I found her loitering in one of the classrooms. She told me her story. I've currently put her up at a motel down the street."

"Hikari?" Coach Takato blinked. "Sendoh, Hikari died twenty years ago."

"What do you mean?"

"That incident you allude to," said Coach Takato. "When the police got to the scene, they found her husband and his friends lying dead on the floor with their throats slit, and Hikari in the upstairs bedroom. She had killed herself."

Sendoh laughed.

"I'm sure you'll find that she's alive and well."

"And I'm telling you I went to her funeral myself," said Coach Takato.

Sendoh excused himself and dialed the motel he had checked Hikari into. A brief conversation with the animated receptionist revealed that no one named Hikari Mizuoka had ever checked into the motel. The reservation that Sendoh had made over the phone had been for nothing, and the receptionist had had to turn away guests even when they had a room lying empty.

Sendoh returned to the cafeteria, looking rather white. He related what he had learnt to the group. Suddenly he felt rather silly for pushing his rationalist explanations on everyone all this time.

"Bummer," said Kogure, grinning. "I guess this means this really is a haunting after all."

tbc.

* * *

A/N: Seriously. I wish people'd just stop fucking disappearing, too. If you were one of the unfortunate souls who read my original _Nights at Kainan_ back in the day, you may remember that people had a tendency to disappear there as well, only to return anticlimactically later on. As a writer, it behooves me to be faithful to my roots.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Now is probably the best time to confess that I'm debating abandoning this fic altogether. It SUCKS. I don't know why I ever undertook to write it. Childhood fantasies under a grown-up pen turn to rot faster than a loaf of bread from the same period that you forgot about in a kitchen cabinet and happened upon eight years later when you were desirous of eating a fucking peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich. (Freddi Fish, anyone?) This fic has given me more sleepless nights than the prospect of not having a job after I graduate. Ugh.


End file.
